Build history models with Oracle SQL Developer Modeler 4.0, intro

Oracle SQL Developer Modeler (OSDM) is a nice free data modeling tool with a lot of nice features. I’m going to use a set of these features to create historic versions of a sample model. Hans Hultgren and Martijn Evers have made a classification of Ensemble Modeling Forms or Styles of Data Vault modeling historical data warehouse modeling styles. The classifications I will use:

elementary Anchor Vault, all attributes are split in separate tables except the business key

Anchor Modeling, all attributes are split in separate tables including the business key

Focal point modeling, externalizes the business key but groups attributes

I’m going to build two versions of a weak Anchor Vault version:

a Head Version model, this is the maximum grouped version of an Anchor Vault

a ‘regular’ Anchor Vault, this is a less grouped version where we split the foreign keys and the attributes

The last one will be an Anchor Model, the most split version of them all.

The general approach used for all the three models in OSDM is:

reverse engineer a (source) model in OSDM into a Relational model

then forward engineer the relational model a to logical model

then in the logical model ‘surrogate’ the model

This is the starting point for all of the models and is equal for all of the models. The next steps are used for all of the three variants, but are slightly different for each model type:

then create a new relational model with one table that contains the ‘default columns’

then forward engineer the surrogated logical model to the new relational model and use the table with the ‘default columns’ as template

split the tables using the split table wizard to get the correct tables

extend the primary key of the ‘version/history’ tables

The nice thing of this approach in OSDM is that at the end we have a mapping between the ‘source model’ and the ‘historical model’ via the logical model.
Let’s get started with the first three generic steps. First we have a DDL of the source model:

1. Import the DDL file into a Relational model. I used the DB2/UDB 7.1 setting to import this DDL correctly. The result is a nice model:

Ok, now we have the model in OSDM.2. We can forward engineer it to a logical model.

3. The last generic step is to surrogate the model. I made a nice JavaScript you can use to automate this part. You can add this as a custom transformation script:

In the screenshot above the ‘Mozilla Rhino’ engine is not there but the ‘Rhino’ engine is there on my Ubuntu machine. Somehow the same javascript engine it is reported different. The logical model know looks like this:

The model in this state is preserved in this GitHub repository as master.
All the next versions will be saved as a branch of the master model. That’s it for now. The next posts will be: